Micromax Canvas Spark 3 quick review: Phablet for the masses

Micromax is going through a rough period. After growing exponentially in the last three years, Micromax has seemingly been stopped in its tracks. In the mid-range segment its offerings have struggled to compete against Chinese brands like Xiaomi on both specs and price. For entry level smartphone

Micromax is going through a rough period. After growing exponentially in the last three years, Micromax has seemingly been stopped in its tracks. In the mid-range segment its offerings have struggled to compete against Chinese brands like Xiaomi on both specs and price. For entry level smartphones, however, it has done better. Last year, it sold over a million smartphones on Snapdeal as a part of the Canvas Spark line and it is doubling down on the sub-brand to get more user engagement. The Canvas Spark 3 which was announced a couple of days ago is another budget contender which will be sold exclusively via Snapdeal. It may not look incredibly special from the outside, but it does have a couple of things going for it.

Micromax is billing this as a smartphone which can offer a rich multimedia experience for people who are on a tight budget. Micromax touts a big 5.5-inch HD display coupled with a large loudspeaker which will make for a good movie watching experience.

"Video and visual content consumption will be one of the drivers. We have optimised the device for that," said Shubhojit Sen, Micromax's chief marketing officer.

And seemingly, Micromax has done a good job with the device, specially for one at its price point. For Rs 5,000, there aren't many devices that will offer users a wide canvas which is quite bright with good viewing angles and decent speakers. The speakers, especially, are one of the hardware components that budget phones skim upon. The Canvas Spark 3 doesn't.

Micromax has equipped the phone with a quad-core 1.3GHz processor, which is coupled with 1GB RAM and the performance seemingly is acceptable for Rs 5,000 phone. That being said, the YU Yunique which is product made by Micromax's subsidiary felt smoother in use.

This could've happened because Micromax has retooled the user interface. The phone comes with the Indus launcher which also can translate English content into indic languages. The launcher also increases the size of UI elements like the icons which could make the phone easier to use for first time buyers.

Strangely, the phone comes with three different app stores. The standard Google Play store, App Bazaar, and the Micromax app store. App Bazaar has 15,000 apps of which 10,000 are in indic languages.

Micromax executives said that they found that people used App bazaar 3 to 9 times more than the Play Store. That's something we believe will depend on the type of user, but for people who aren't fluent in English, it could be of greater use than the Google Play store.

Design wise, the phone felt quite comfortable in the hand. It is primarily made out of plastic and has a soft-touch matte finish on its back. The back is also slightly curved, which makes it easy to hold, however, we found that the back got smudged quite easily.

Micromax has managed to cram a 2,500mAh battery, which is decent for a phone of its size. It also comes with a 8-megapixel camera on the back and a 5-megapixel camera. We didn't test the cameras in variable lighting, though, in a closed-door environment photos didn't look spectacular on the phone's display.

As Micromax is targeting the phone for first time smartphone buyers it has opted to not add 4G capabilities to the device to keep its price down.

Overall, it appears to be a device, which may to appeal to the tech enthusiast on a budget, but someone who is more focussed on watching videos on the go. The phone will be available on Snapdeal next week onwards for Rs 4,999, though you'll need to register for the flash sale. We will soon have a full review of the device.

Do You Like This Story? Awesome! Now share the story Too bad. Tell us what you didn't like in the comments